Could the Uttarakhand tragedy have been avoided, or at least minimised?

There is no simple answer.

Environmentalists describe the death and damages as a man-made disaster while geologists say the extent of destruction could have been far lesser if stricter regulations were in place and authorities were equipped to deal with the situation.

Importantly, the events focus attention on the debate on the December 18, 2012 notification of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which declares the entire watershed around the 135-km stretch between Gaumukh and Uttarakashi along Bhagirathi as an eco-sensitive zone under the Environment Protection Act, 1986, in practice banning all construction activities in this area, and how the State government has been opposing it stoutly, arguing that such an order will adversely affect all development activities and economic progress of the region.

The notification, if implemented, would result in the closure of hydropower projects of 1,743-MW along the Bhagirathi and a ban on mining and construction, especially hotels and resorts, and land use conversion. Power projects and mining and construction activities are the main causes of preventable environmental degradation.

The Assembly passed a resolution, and Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month to urge him to cancel the notification.

‘Calculated risk’

The former Deputy Director-General of the Geological Survey of India, V.K. Raina, told The Hindu that while natural calamities such as cloud bursts and flash floods could not be prevented, but deaths and damage could be contained if there were laws to regulate construction along rivers, and authorities were prepared to deal with the situation. “Construction in Uttarakhand is not planned. The owners have taken a calculated risk and paid for it.”

Had India Metrological Department alerted the State government, authorities should have...

YOU MAY ALSO FIND THESE DOCUMENTS HELPFUL

...Uttarakhand's path to devastation a natural calamity or a result of industrialisation?
(The hill state of Uttarakhand…)
India's go-to person for tourism, the man who branded Kerala as "God's own country", and turned the southern state into one of the busiest tourist destinations in the country, simply cannot come to terms with the devastation in Uttarakhand.
Amitabh Kant, who is credited with pioneering tourism marketing in India, believes the tragedy is because of a significant error of judgement of the state authorities.
"Uttarakhand should not have taken the path of industrialisation for development and should have been developed as the best destination for sustainable tourism in the world. States must focus on their core competence; not every state should industrialise."
It's difficult not to agree with Kant after seeing images of the hill state that has been ravaged by floods. More than 1,000 people are believed to have been killed and at the time of writing as many as 1,400 were still stranded.(On Saturday, the Uttarakhand assembly speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal said the death toll could cross 10,000.) Rescue efforts have been hampered by incessant rains and the tough mountain terrain.
Even as television channels beamed horrific visuals of the calamity, the debate on whether the industrialisation of the hill state had contributed to the disaster turned into a face-off between...

...EnvironmentalDisaster
Who would have known that on April 20th 2010, the United States would soon be facing the worst environmentaldisaster. On that fateful day, an offshore oilrig named the “Deepwater Horizon” suffered an explosion. Seventeen people were injured and eleven people died from the accident. The damaged oilrig sank into the Gulf of Mexico the next day, and a one-by-five mile oil slick appeared in the ocean. At the time, it was unknown whether the oil was from the rig or if the underwater oil well was leaking. The BP oil company soon realized the well, which is five thousand feet below the surface, was gushing oil at a rate of thirty-five thousand to sixty thousand barrels a day. The Gulf region is in a state of emergency because tourism, wildlife, jobs, and the environment are going to take catastrophic hits.
Tourism in the cities on the Gulf are hurting severely because of the oil spill. Tourists visit those cities for their sugar-sand beaches and their great seafood restaurants. However, the sugar-sand beaches are coated with oil and the seafood restaurants have closed down because of the lack of seafood. In Biloxi, Mississippi nine miles of beaches are nearly empty at a time when local residents say bathers and vendors typically swarm the sands (Wall Street Journal). In Florida, tourism is one of the top money-making industries. Furthermore, if oil hits the beaches of Pensacola that...

...﻿DISASTER MANAGEMENT CYCLE
The disaster cycle or the disaster life cycle consists of the steps that emergency managers take in planning for and responding to disasters. Each step in the disaster cycle correlates to part of the ongoing cycle that is emergency management. This disaster cycle is used throughout the emergency management community, from the local to the national and international levels.
Preparedness
The first step of the disaster cycle is usually considered to be preparedness although one could start at any point in the cycle and return to that point before, during, or after a disaster. For the sake of understanding, we will start with preparedness. Prior to a disaster’s occurrence, emergency manager will plan for various disasters which could strike within the area of responsibility. For instance, a typical city located along a river would need to plan for not only flooding but also hazardous material accidents, large fires, extreme weather (perhaps tornadoes, hurricanes, and/or snowstorms), geologic hazards (perhaps earthquakes, tsunamis, and/or volcanoes), and other applicable hazards. The emergency manager learns about past disasters and current potential hazards and then begins to collaborate with other officials to write a disaster plan for the jurisdiction with appendices for specific hazards or...

...EnvironmentalDisasters
For the purpose of this article an environmentaldisaster is defined as a specific event caused by human activity that results in a seriously negative effect on the environment. Sometimes a natural disaster can become an environmentaldisaster, but that is a topic to be discussed elsewhere.
In most cases environmentaldisasters are caused by human error, accident, lack of foresight, corner cutting during industrial processes, greed, or by simple incompetence. In other words without some kind of human intervention they would never have happened. They are also often characterised by firm authoritative denials that anything serious has even happened.
Lack of foresight is a common cause of an environmentaldisaster. In agriculture a classic example of is the increasing salinity of soils in hot climates. With the need to produce more food, a warm climate seems ideal for European-style agriculture, once the existing vegetation has been cleared. The one proviso is that there must be plenty of water. Irrigation projects and deep wells are usually the answer, but as has been found in Australia, if this is not properly managed, salination can result and the land becomes effectively useless.
A further example of a catastrophic and misguided interference with nature resulted in the dust bowls that hit...

...The purpose of this report is to find out of three environmentaldisasters, which one was the most devastating to humans and the environment.
This report is intended to be read by the United Nations to help make an important decision regarding what pollution event should be classified as the world’s most devastating.
Key terms essential to an understanding of this report have been defined as follows:
* TORCH – The Other Chernobyl Report
* Methyl Isocyanate – A toxic chemical used in the manufacture of some pesticides
Research for this report was conducted using information obtained from the following sources:
* The internet
* Information provided in class
Research conducted shows that the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion in Ukraine, which occurred on the 26th of April 1986, continues to be the most devastating environmentaldisaster. It was the most devastating because out of the disasters chosen this had the most deaths and effects on the environment, continuing today.It caused the most deaths both immediate and cancer related. It spread across vast parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe. It caused hundreds of thousands of people to be relocated from their homes in severely contaminated areas.1 This human caused pollution event was unable to be contained, being in the atmosphere and spread over vast distances. After 26 years the area around the site is still a severe...

...multi-day cloudburst centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand caused devastating floods and landslides in the country's worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami. Though parts of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in India, some regions of Western Nepal, and some parts of Western Tibet also experienced heavy rainfall, over 95% of the casualties occurred in Uttarakhand. As of 16 July 2013, according to figures provided by the Uttarakhand government, more than 5,700 people were "presumed dead." [3] This total included 934 local residents.[4]
Destruction of bridges and roads left about 100,000 pilgrims and tourists trapped in the valleys leading to three of the four Hindu Chota Char Dham pilgrimage sites [5] [6][7][8] [9][10] The Indian Air Force, the Army and paramilitary troops evacuated more than 110,000 people from the flood ravaged Origin
From 14 to 17 June 2013, the Indian state of Uttarakhand and adjoining area received heavy rainfall, which was about 375 percent more than the benchmark rainfall during a normal monsoon.[12] This caused the melting of Chorabari Glacier at the height of 3800 metres, and eruption of the Mandakini River[13] which led to heavy floods near Gobindghat,Kedar Dome,Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Western Nepal, and acute rainfall in other nearby regions of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and some parts of...

...Environmentaldisaster is defined as a disaster to the natural environment due to human activity. Obviously, it is not an act of God. Human have forgotten that mother earth is a gift from God, to be respected and taken care of. Therefore, environment disasters issues are getting serious all over the world within these few years.
Global warming is the result of human activities. Excessive amounts of greenhouse gases had been released to the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases such as carbon monoxide that emitted by vehicles and other heat trapping gases emitted by factories had aided in the global warming. This causes the climate change, consequently hasten species extinction, causes coastal flooding, lead to more frequent and severe storms such as Hurricanes and some diseases will spread such as malaria. At the moment, the effects of global warming on sea levels are clearly accelerating.
On the other hand, the environmentaldisaster for instance, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill along the U.s coast at June 1979 had endangered the sea life. The immediate effects of toxic had interrupted the food chain on which fish and others wildlife such as mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians that live near the ocean were also poisoned. Long term ecological effects that destroy the marine organic substrate are also harmful to wildlife, so species populations may decrease.
Everyone has a role to play in...

...Environmental Destruction
In the past century we have made many great innovations such as automobiles and aircrafts and even pesticides. With these great innovations come consequences. Such as global warming as Bill Mckibben states in his essay “The Environmental Issue from Hell”. In this essay Mckibben talks about how humanity in the past century has contributed to global warming by using fuel burning vehicles and aircraft. Before Pesticides, farmers had a tough time keeping crops alive due to insects. With the creation of pesticides this problem went away, but these chemicals have started to contaminate our air, rivers, and earth as described in “The Obligation to Endure” by Rachel Carson. We have 2 serious environmental problems and these are the possible solutions.
Innovations in the way we travel have had a very big negative impact on our planet like global warming. As Mckibben describes in his essay that “OF you switched today from the average car American car to a big SUV, and drove it for just one year, the difference in carbon dioxide that you would produce is equivalent to leaving your refrigerator door open and forgetting to close it for six years” (748). What Mckibben means is that our minds are more geared towards comfort and looks and by buying these big nice looking trucks and SUV’s we are killing the environment because we are releasing twice the amount of carbon gasses than your
average vehicle from the...